This is some great discussion everyone. I feel that from many of the comments here, there has been a general observation that Yu Jing's fluff started off fairly balanced. Something that a few of the posters have mentioned is that most of the fluff pieces that show Yu Jing in a positive light come from the first Core Book. Following the Core Book, we have the N2 book which delved into the ISS and JSA sectorials in more detail. This meant that the more recent lore surrounding Yu Jing has been about the authoritarian police state enforcers and the oppressed but spirited Japanese minority. Neither of those backgrounds really painted Yu Jing in a positive light. Gray and grey maybe, but nothing that draws in the reader as aspirational or heroic Further fluff pieces have added to Yu Jing's more sinister overtones - Scarface being pumped full of debilitating combat drugs by a Yu Jing intelligence operation, Yu Jing being implicated in the bombing of a Haqq transport along with its usual corporate espionage in the Red Veil narrative, and of course Yu Jing being the empire that the Japanese are rising up against in Uprising. I can't think of any positive actions that the faction has committed to which counter balances these events. Could anyone who is more familiar with the faction lore add an example in the more recent lore write-ups? I think this nails what I've been feeling about the faction. Said's Orietalism and modern day China's place in the Western political discourse as a political antagonist feed into the default treatment and thought of Yu Jing as being the "not good guys". Who wants to openly back an authoritarian regime that on the surface, limits your personal freedoms? This is a great point! This isn't the first time Yu Jing's lack of characters has been brought up. I think psychoticstorm's point is also a great one. JSA really had a disproportionate amount of characters given that it was just a sectorial. Even after the split, the faction has essentially a full faction roster of personalities. Yu Jing currently has Sun Tze, who as a recreation, nearly every human faction has by default, and the Dire Foes characters (one of which left along with the rest of JSA!) Leaving out any mercenary characters that ISS can take, Yu Jing has all of TWO named Chinese characters: Gui Feng Xi Zhuang Sun Tze That's it! I have a feeling that being much more familiar with anime and then by extension with Japanese historical characters. it's probably just much more difficult for the Corvus Belli team to think of named Chinese characters who might be interesting. There was an attempt with Ko Dali, but I do agree with psychoticstorm that she didn't actually add much to the feel of the faction, she had some generic and mildly cringey Dragon Lady qualities in her backstory, and she was a Tiger Soldier, and that was really it. JSA leaving Yu Jing gives the faction a lot more room to breathe in the sense that any new characters that get added to Yu Jing can now properly give Yu Jing more personality rather than JSA. I believe that if we all really think about it, everytime Yu Jing picked up a new Japanese character, it didn't really feel like that character added to Yu Jing as a whole so much as JSA specifically. Giving Yu Jing more interesting and sympathetic characters could go a long way to giving the faction a more balanced feel.
Sometimes I think if it went for ww2 yu jing would have been the inverse with Japanese on top. Well annoyingly a lot of the "positive" yu jing fluff pieces have the "yu jing ministry of propaganda" tagline which is more likely for people to dismiss.
That would be PanO who did it, technically a PanO corporation who hired mercs to do it, but PanO never the less. Japanese had disproportionate amount of characters because the Japanese were depicted for their "heroic" overtone and characters convey that feeling. note here heroic, not honourable, or good.
That's good to know. While I read over the fluff that came with the campaign a few times it seemed a bit ambiguous. I think that one of the issues with Yu Jing is that they lack heroic characters. Even if they were not necessarily good, as many of the characters in the other factions are also known for having shady pasts or rough characters, but they nonetheless come across as heroic. Yu Jing currently lacks any heroic non-DireFoes and non-Recreation characters, which is a bit surprising given it is supposed to be one of the major powers. I do hope that Corvus Belli takes the JSA split as an opportunity to give us some more interesting character stories from the Yu Jing perspective. (I'd love to see my Qapu Khalqi get a character too, but that's for another topic!)
Part of the issue is the objective fact that there is VERY little negative material for PanOceania (there's basically just that one bit about Atechs, who the RPG confirms are a minority of a few million in a population of over 15 billion in PanOceania). And the other issue is that in the N3 background and setting material, and even the RPG, there is VERY little POSITIVE material for Yu Jing. This is a trend which needs to be reversed. There's also the Quingdao report, the role of Yu Jing in Outrage and all of their ISS material. The blackest of black ops units in PanOceania (the Hexas and Locust) are MILD in comparison to even the least hardcore ISS units. It's certain that we will see at least one additional character when we get Invincible Army. Personally I hope that there are at least two. The in-game characters are, obviously, a great place for the designers to put some of the improved setting and background material for Yu Jing.
You mean "antiheroic". Heroic implies (very nearly literally means) "honourable and good". They have, after all, done the right thing for all the wrong reasons and the wrong results, which is the definition of anti-heroes.
True there is some language barrier here, in my language Heroic does not necessary mean that the actions are based on good or evil, but somebody who stands out a leading role in a play, true it is usually used for the "good guy" but not always. In any case, what I mean is the JSA been based on Bushido and all that means that the Japanese needed the characters to stand out because this is what the thematic of the JSA is, on the other hand, the Yu Jing was the amorphous army, now this will probably change.
I seem to remember Van Zant+Mirage 5 being a popular alpha strike list back when Human Sphere first released.
True, but not as brutal as 4 light flame throwers and combi rifle with mimetism, it was an interesting combo never the less.
Considering how orders work, I'd recon the bigger problem was the Tiger HMG (which also got removed... and nerfed)
Some things require disproportionate amount of googling to find :( Keep getting false positives regarding some changes, too many big and important releases for Infinity in the short period between 2012 and 2014.
Yeah, I've noticed both of those. And I agree that CB needs to bring back the good parts of YJ. It should be pretty telling that I, as a modern American (and rather libertarian politically, which means I don't like government telling me what to do), would rather live in YJ than in PanO. I hope this is actually what Bostria was talking about when he said that the removal of JSA opened up design space in YJ.
From the newest aristea reveal (“you can tell he’s evil because he’s from Yu-Jing” or vice versa) we can see that CB think Yu-Jing is the bad guy. We’ll have to see what the future fluff is like, though I don’t expect uprising to paint them as anything but tyrants and murderers. So there’s that. :(
I think Uprising was the utter failure of "Yujing" as it means and implies. An Asiatic ecleptic union new culture and folk with a duality between modernity and tradition. If no Japanese remains in Yujing, the union that means Yujing has failed to the core. No other faction has suffered such a blow since the start of this game. But if somehow loyal japanese folks keep on yujing... not with an independent army, but being part of Yujing like the rest of asiatic cultures (For example, Japaneses ranking inside the zhanshi), This loss may be not as bad as we think. Yujing would be resurfacing from the ashes of this uprising united, stronger and better as a faction. The other side of the dilema is how yujing is seen. We are the rising dragon. The very motive of the birth of PANO We are an authoritarian Faction. with a sole party that rules and an emperor who is the head of Justice. Almost all of the Yujing artwork comes around this Ideas. Oppression, control, Force... We use Criminals as Handwork and Cannon folder in military and policial conflicts We solve all of our problems With intimidation and force (Political, Militar, Economic...) We seem to prime ourselves before humanity (or at least that's how we are taking part in the last conflicts) We have extreme wealth and we are the second faction with more tesseum O-12 was born to keep us, Pano and our struggles in check "for the benefit of the rest of the human sphere" O-12 is constantly sanctioning us - They've taken Flamia Island from us and splitted it as they want between the factions - They've made us pay the damages in our powerplant in flamia - Now They've interfered in our internal affairs with the Japanese uprising and forced us to give away our territory to this seccesionist NA2 faction. So yeah we are seen as the enemy, we are seen as the bad guy, because they fear us, because they envy us, because they need to be united against us. This is not a bad thing "per se". But the three bold propositions that I've stated are what I don't like. Sure Force and control are part of our nature, but why we can't have some "heroic" themed art? why are we always the aggressor? can't we be holding our ground against the CA? or saving human lives (even our own)? Sure Force is our signature move, but why can't we solve anything with political finesse or why can't we seem to be doing burnt land policies? The main thing about infinity factions is that none are "black" or "white". They are all "grey". But somehow Yujing seems to be darker because to the outside is always aggressive or we seem to just don't care. I think we need some lights on that side. And that's what I wish for Yujing. Maybe a stand against the combined (that seem to be growing strong and in numbers lately), Maybe defending or assisting another faction against PANO (even if we get something in return)... that's my starting point for the next global campaign
I think this is a great summary of the faction's overall 'fluff points' in broad strokes. I would add just one more point to that list, which is something that I and some other posters already brought up, which is the constant use of "propaganda" in Yu Jing's fluff whenever anything positive is being mentioned. Perhaps the term propaganda has different connotations in the Spanish language so it doesn't translate as well into English? In English, when something is labelled as propaganda, it comes with an implicit assumption that it is deceptive and meant to manipulate. When you add these connotations to any positive fluff piece about Yu Jing, then it invalidates anything positive that is being said about the faction. Perhaps CV is not aware of this? @psychoticstorm, I hope you do take into account the issues that many of the posters here have brought up. I think too many of the points being used to argue that Yu Jing is not being portrayed negatively, especially in the recent fluff, focus on very specific pieces of fluff in the books and perhaps from comments made by the CV staff. However those specific points are very different from the overall feel of the faction, which is something that the faction exudes without necessarily having to dive deep into the faction's fluff. Mc_Clane just summarized very well many of the things that make Yu Jing feel like one of the antagonists of the setting because for people who are not intimately familiar with every individual event in the Infinity universe, Yu Jing is going to look like one of the bad guys because of these overall issues. I really do hope that CV takes note of this and starts to portray Yu Jing with a little more balance in terms of the factions overall feel.
Well put, both @Devrailis and @Mc_Clane . Many of the arguments in response have been missing the point. These are good summaries.
@Mc_Clane I think most of the Agressor == evil comes from the trope that heroes are reactive and villains are active (thus, the heroes protect the status quo, allowing for the narrative to stay there while having a conflict between heroes and villains where the heroes can win all the time and there is no need to think about the ramifications of such win... even when the heroes are rebelling against the system, it's because the system is broken and they try ti bring a previous one back...). Certainly I hope at least 2 IA characters, and IF Sun Tze goes to IA, he should be removed from ISS (what the hell is the strategic military leader of YJ doing commanding the internal police and judicial forces? Sure, he has the Emperor's Authority, but even so...). This could be easily justified: until IA's adaptation to low-scale ops, the ISS was the only organization ready for that (aside from the JSA, who would take Sun Tze with less than ideal enthusiasm, and he must have opted for the very basics of conflict: do not engage unless you have assured your victory). Potato, pohtahtoh... You can't have a government without the strength and the willingness to use such strength to ensure the laws are followed. Control is needed for the right application of such force, and it seems like YJ is portrayed, to an extent, as more populated than PanO (or with population centers more densely populated)... this means the Control measures have to be more forceful, because they need to cover much more people in the same time. As for the oppressive, it's all a scale. Right now we live, in certain ways, more oppressed than certain cultures a millennia ago did, but we don not feel like so. @psychoticstorm as for the "heroes", I agree the term is not used right in Infinity among the fans. The Army's classification as "Characters" is more in line of what it means: individuals who embody the feel of a certain army. For example, Achilles and Hector are both Heroes... but they embody nearly opposite virtues. Then we have Musashi, and the different Specops... So using "Character" as a delivery method for the "feel" of each sectorial would be, I think, the right way of doing it.
I think Sun Tze s thre because they are also the intelligence agency, alternatively given his importance they might act as his bodyguards, or given his reactions in uprising he might want to have a closer eye to their actions.
Well, the latter (having a close eye) would mean to doubt the Emperor's selection of Hsien (who should keep the ISS focused, as their "generals"). I would expect a Hsien character, frankly, to cover from Sun Tze's departure (if he does, indeed, depart), with Strategos 1 and not much more departure from a Hsien's loadout (there is, however, an option to add a bodyguard to him, lowering his cost by removing CC and letting it Haris with a Pheasant and Zhanying, for example). The idea is that, outside from the greeks, characters are an option (even a "you need this character to play this way) and not an autoinclude. As for the Intelligence agency, the ISS is "homeland"-type, in theory at least and for what I understood of them they play only inside of the State Empire, so... And Sun Tze is smarter than to try and micromanage, co-opting some Pheasant agents to act as his ears and eyes would suffice, while he takes care of the big picture. About for the "bodyguard" part, that's the only one that can run (at least for me), but there is the matter of him not entering any Fireteam, so... And yeah, I fully expect him being able to link with Terracotta or other troops if he shows up in IA. Dunno, Sun Tze's presence in the ISS always struck me more as a "let's have all the most martial recreations inside a Sectorial" (Saladin is the only one outside... because of fluff reasons: Hassassin would not accept him, since the Old Man doesn't trust him, and QK are mostly "the Navy", while he is centered on army tactics...), or "let's get use of that Strategos in the Elite sectorial of YJ". I feel he would fit better on IA, frankly.
